This is the Blog for MORRIS BERMAN, the author of "Dark Ages America". It includes current publications and random thoughts about U.S. Foreign Policy, including letters and reactions to publications from others.
A cultural historian and social critic, MORRIS BERMAN is the author of "Wandering God" and "The Twilight of American Culture". Since 2003 he has been a visiting professor in sociology at Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.
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February 04, 2018

Mumbai in the West Village

Hi there Waferinos-
As some of you know, I am immensely wealthy, and was the mastermind behind 9/11, which I also funded. Since 2001, I've been pouring billions into Hamas and Hezbollah, but not with any great results. As a result, I've decided to move in a radically new direction, and launch an Indian restaurant in NY. I'm thinking 6th Ave and 11th St. might be a good location.
I'll be flying in chefs from the Punjab, Kashmir, Kerala, and Uttar Pradesh (BTW, when Indians want to say "That's hogwash," they say "That's Uttar Pradesh"). Each of these cooks will receive 7-figure salaries, and Salman Rushdie has promised to dine there on opening night. Note that the restaurant will have a special Wafer Room, reserved exclusively for Wafers.
So I need you guys to vote on what wd be the best name for this establishment. Here are the ones I've come up with so far: Moti Mahal, Taj Mahal, Light of Bengal, Muglai Palace, Rajah's Feast, Nehru's Nosh, Viceroy's Victuals, Curzon's Curryhouse, Mahatma's Masala, and Hindi Harvest. If anyone has another suggestion, pls feel free to do a write-in vote.
Mango Lassi to you all-
-Your Guru, Sri Berm

I think "Mumbai in the West Village" is the best possible name for the establishment!

Johnny, DioGenes, Zombies- re: your comments on Umair's article in the last post.

Except for linking US culture to the rise of fascism in our time, Umair's article was quite good! I would like to say that he's right about the cause of infantilism---extreme hierarchy---but we have had that only since after the Civil War when banks and corporations were put in the catbird seat and you had these huge monopolies and trusts employing armies of factory and office workers. And life in America has always been a competition; it's only grown more intensely so since the rise of Reagan and Clinton and the near-destruction of the social safety net. Yet collectively 'mericans didn't act as childishly from the Revolution through 2000 as much they do now.

And thanks to that article, I've figured out why Blacks as a whole are so badly off in this country: over the centuries slavery, then institutionalised racism, and finally racism-fueled divestment in our cities have never allowed the bulk of them to become mature, fully-functioning adults.

My suggestion for a name for this new Indian restaurant is "Rama Belman". This Hindu inspired name would be based on the root word "ram", which means "stop, stand still, rest, rejoice, be pleased." I would be most pleased to dine with fellow Wafers at such an establishment, and offer to bus my own dishes when finished.

What I really need is a definitve answer (any question you answer is by definition definitive ) of what marks the beginning of the dark ages? I was reading your "Waiting for the Barbarians" and thought it may be plausable to start the clock at 476 with Odoacer's assent to the former Roman throne.

"The United States is very good at forgetting. When it fulminates about Iran’s nuclear program, it forgets that it literally built Iran’s first nuclear reactor. When it treats North Korea’s anti-Americanism as deranged, it forgets that time we flattened the entire country by dropping 32,000 tons of napalm on its cities. When a terrorist says he tried to blow up Times Square to punish America for drone strikes on Muslims, the country wonders what he could possibly be referring to. When the country denounced Saddam Hussein for supposedly possessing weapons of mass destruction, it forgot that it had previously knowingly provided military aid to Saddam Hussein while he was launching chemical attacks on Iranians. (Foreign Policy said this made the U.S. “complicit[] in some of the most gruesome chemical weapons attacks ever launched.”)"

Eena Meena Deeka. It is a authentic Indian name, easy to remember -americans like simple easy names- like TGI, KFC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxJH9kXo_3o

I have also found you, yours only, chief chef Mastanamma. She is also very authentic. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/food-and-drink/features/meet-106-year-old-great-grandmother-whose-cooking-videos-have/http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-39872650/a-great-grandmother-from-india-is-winning-hearts-with-her-cooking-videos

Your chief chef Mastanamma is highly talented, renowned all over the world including america -actually I first heard about her at a Tea Party rally- and she comes with some added perks, if you may. She's young and beautiful, and a widow with a predicament. It seems in her religion woman can't attain moksha if they die a widow. So ever since the death of her husband she has been looking for a man, someone who's handsome and well heeled, american but not too american (it's a chef thing), with exquisite tastes, preferably jewish (ask her why), I was told by my Tea Party inner contact. Now I don't want to get you all overly exited and trip on yourself -Mastanamma is very selective- but, just a subtle suggestion. And here's a twofer for a sinner like you : I just got message from the TP-HQ that, by the dictates of hinduism, anyone who helps another being to moksha (any beings, cows including) gets a free gift ticket to moksha, express lane. The Tea Party connection to India all Wafers know.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-D_3ujShzw

Newly wed, Belman n Mastanamma, on the way to their famous restaurant EMD, Eena Meena Deeka. Imagine,...https://youtu.be/8wZDU-DDTOU?t=6

There are problems with each one of your suggested names.Moti Mahal clashes with a well known chain in India, trademark issues. Taj Mahal evokes more of an emotion of love than it elicits any desire for culinary delights. Bengal was the light in the 19th and the 20th centuries. It's more of a dark pit now. Rajas are giving way to the cronies of the modern day rulers. Nehru is out of favor with the present political establishment! Viceroy's Victuals, Curzon's Curryhouse evoke strong memories of the colonial past and its imperial elites. It won't be a good gesture to serve meat in Mahatma's Masala. And Hindi Harvest won't go down well with a large part of India (mostly the south) that does not speak Hindi.

BTW, you will never find something called Mango Lassi in India. Haven't seen yet. We never mix the two. It's an invention of the expatriates (NRIs as we call them).

So.... How about some simpler tags like, Tastes of India, or From the Kitchen of India.... or whatever. Whatever you name it, and with or without the mango lassi, next time I am there, I will surely visit the Wafer room.

Terrific idea. I had my first Indian food, vindaloo so spicy tears ran down, on 6th street NYC. Confession: I'm... not much of a pastrami eater. Processed meat's not healthy they say. I wanted to preserve myself for better times, but joke's on me, my country's decline's making me sick anyway.

My university has an exchange program with a college outside Mumbai and I went a few years ago. Partly a political act. India's less authoritarian than the others poised to take over post-collapse, Russia and China. I love the culture, food, Bollywood, history. Of course so many problems, legacy of colonialism. All the students there were mad to take selfies with me. I was ashamed to have only a flip-phone among them! So now I have an iPhone like any turkey...

Our restaurant should serve the spiciest curry anywhere and it should be called Vindictive Vindaloo.

(They actually had barely heard of Vindaloo near Mumbai, as it's a Goa specialty...)

Well, that certainly tapped a rich vein. I've also been thinking of Mountbatten's Retreat.

Chad-

Take a look at those faces, willya?

Pras-

Wow! Thanks for all the inside info. Maybe I'll just call it Keema Nan. Or Pappadam Palace. Chutney Choo-Choo, Dharma Dervish, also gd.

Esca-

I love that song. It is part of the sound track of a great film called "Today's Special," abt an Indian restaurant in NY. You've got me all worked up abt Mastanamma. If she agrees to marry me, she'll work for me as my chef, and we shall serve Cafe Moksha exclusively in the Wafer Room.

Mo-

Allah Akbar! But also: Jeff & Akbar.

Bill-

This is fabulous news. I too love Trumpi, as you know. Meanwhile, I appreciate the documentation of American Turkeyhood.

comrade-

You mean 20K, rt? As for Odoacer: my kinda guy. Yeah, around 500, I'd say. Check the Twilight bk. I'm getting so senile, I can't remember what I wrote.

Him-

Those are gd. What about Gita, Shmita!

jj-

"So I’ll meet ’im later onAt the place where ’e is gone—Where it’s always double drill and no canteen. ’E’ll be squattin’ on the coalsGivin’ drink to poor damned souls,An’ I’ll get a swig in hell from Gunga Din! Yes, Din! Din! Din! You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din! Though I’ve belted you and flayed you, By the livin’ Gawd that made you, You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!"

@Dill Most good lit on the rise of fascism emphasizes that it is such a troubling historical period precisely because an apparently adult German culture became so mad. Heidegger is the most obvious case study in this respect. I think the real take away should be one of humility- however civilized and morally advanced you may think your society is, it's never that far removed from barbarism.

@Zar As a resident of this ridiculous state, I am proud to say that Illinois is leading the charge in new forms of social dysfunction. I know there are a lot of Illinoians lurking here that may be suffering through out latest governor's race. We have an old money oligarch in J.P Pritzker running against Daniel Biss, a scammy mathematician and self-styled 'middle-class' champion, for the Democratic nomination.

Hard to say what's more corrupt in Illinois, politics or academia. I am sure there are thousands of profs who are dying to get published in these journals that got pushed aside for some guy that wanted a few articles under his belt before running for office.

Bill, thanks for the article, the comparison to Reagan is a good one I think. The high regard with which so many people in this country hold him is pretty astounding. And it cuts across the aisle. Like when I tell people that the Reagan administration tripled the debt, which kinda flies in the face of the image of him as a responsible fiscal steward, they don't believe it. The image of him has overtaken his actual record on paper, who knows, might happen with Trump too.

Also there was a line in there about the Guatemalan massacre worth noting: "That genocide doesn’t count as something America forgot, because we never bothered to notice it in the first place" . I think the author is being lenient, because this is true of almost all the things America has done in the world. Americans don't know about this stuff and don't want to know.

And regarding your comment on NFL on the last post - I'm pretty neutral on sports but its pretty shameful how the league takes advantage of city coffers, on top of the fact that we are paying these guys to give themselves brain damage. Concussion = brain damage, the medical evidence is pretty clear at this point.

a fab study @ an intersection of philosophy, psychology, and anthropology.

AbstractIt is an old philosophical idea that if the future self is literally different from the current self, one should be less concerned with the death of the future self (Parfit, 1984). This paper examines the relation between attitudes about death and the self among Hindus, Westerners, and three Buddhist populations (Lay Tibetan, Lay Bhutanese, and monastic Tibetans). Compared with other groups, monastic Tibetans gave particularly strong denials of the continuity of self, across several measures. We predicted that the denial of self would be associated with a lower fear of death and greater generosity toward others. To our surprise, we found the opposite. Monastic Tibetan Buddhists showed significantly greater fear of death than any other group. The monastics were also less generous than any other group about the prospect of giving up a slightly longer life in order to extend the life of another.http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cogs.12590/abstract

Looks like we might have just reached our "Uh-oh" moment with Trump now that the stock market appears to be in free fall. A repeat of 2008 would almost certainly prove to be far more disastrous given that America's national debt has doubled since then and the political system is even more paralyzed and dysfunctional than during Chimpy Bush's last year in office. Trump idiotically set himself up to take the full heat if the economy does crash given that he kept hyping the stock market's recent rise as be among his major accomplishments. If this really is IT, he could find himself being the first American to be tarred and feathered in a couple of centuries--hopefully on national teevee, broadcast on every channe.

Meanshile, most idiot Americans seem to assume that the Fed and CONgress will simply open the money spigots again and deficit spend us out of any severe downturn, but it stands to reason that there HAS to be a limit to our ability to endlessly take on trillions of new debt like some psychotic toddler with a platinum visa card. I keep thinking of Lionel Shriver's outstanding novel, The Mandibles, that we discussed at some length on this blog. Maybe our feckless "leaders" still have one more trick up their sleeve to stave off the inevitable, but if they don't Shriver's scenario might start to become reality a decade sooner than she predicted it would.

Mon dear Herr Berman, Me thinks you have too much time on your hands. Nevertheless, if you insist on suggestions, may I humbly add Curry Custards To Go. I had one on a recent visit to Nepal while waiting for guides to lead me up Everest with a team of declinists. Very tasty! Hum, Hum. Planted the Wafer flag at the summit. We are now an official part of mountain-climbing history. (While no one was looking, I peed on the flag in remembrance of Wafers who failed to traverse the Gap and fell into the great Void.)

In the ongoing saga of "al-Qa'bong meets the Motorists," the other day I was once again waiting at a traffic light, in the left turning lane, when I heard a voice behind me say, "Why aren't you in a bike lane?" A passenger in the taxi behind me was apparently upset that I was on the same road that he was. Since there was no bike lane there (I don't use them much anyway), I wittily retorted, "What bike lane?"

The guy then blew out a flurry of words that I couldn't hear, because I had strategically pulled my headphones over my ears (the 'phones have a thermal value as well, since it was -20°) and continued grooving to Lionel Hampton and his Orchestra. For those who complain about cyclists wearing ear buds, etc., this is another reason why we do so.

I would go with the name Pramanika (means authentic in Hindi) of West Village would be good name as you should make a rule “Prohibited to discuss work related business or any kind of hustling.” I am in the middle of your novel “Destiny,” I enjoy and cherish each moment reading it. I love the stories. Feels like a reflection of my life and starting over from scratch. I hope getting it right this time. I have ordered next two books as well: Coming to our Senses and Wandering God. Following the news and current events happening in US, I feel very strong about our decision to make a move. The fall of US Empire is in full speed….. Actually, is progressing faster than I thought it would. This week we are making first trip to Costa Rica and will visit Nicaragua as well. And then make a decision where we will settle down. Cross fingers for us. And thank you. I hope one day we will meet.

Great piece on JFK-thoroughly reckless both personally and professionally. It appears the only difference between him and Oshitforbrains was Oshit was an 8 year photo-op while Kennedy was a 3 year one. Or as someone said of him, all he did was make a good speech about everything.I am however deep into the assassination. Look at the car behind Kennedy's limo. It had 4 standing secret service agents, 2 on each side. Kennedy's car had no secret service protection. Poor guy. He threw his back out a few days earlier during a trist forcing him to wear a back brace which limited his ability to move as shots were being fired. I think firing Allen Dulles probably did him in. Dulles was still running a kind of rouge CIA from his home afterwards and no doubt remained in contact with some very distasteful people. Then LBJ put him on the Warren Commission. Maybe it's me but if I got fired and was later put on a commission investigating my boss's undoing I might be less than objective in my findings.

Here is an interesting interview with Johann Hari about the intertwined (biological AND social)causes of depression and how people have been sold a bill of goods by pharmaceutical companies concerning anti-depressants. If you do not deal with the meaningful/meaningless of work life and lack of community found in neo-liberal societies, depression will continue and get worse. Hari's forthcoming book should be an interesting read.

MB, if your restaurant is going to serve fast food, how about Curry in a Hurry? Or if you will force-feed your customers, how about Curry in a Slurry?

I received AWTY today, on the third day of the latest stock market implosion. I think there's something symbolic and significant about that. On the third day, Jesus rose. On the third day, I read AWTY. Is there a connection perhaps, or am I suffering from some kind of Charles Manson/ Messianic delusions? I'm going to mull it over with a liverwurst on Jewish rye and horseradish mustard. And a side of curry.

I wonder if MB and the Wafers are familiar with Theodore Dalrymple, in my view one of the great writers of our time. He is probably quite a bit more conservative than MB, but a lot of what he has to say seems along the same lines. See for example his latest article:

I had breakfast the other day with a friend who live in Asia the past 12 years- the last 10 in Japan. He moved back to the USA 6 months ago for a new job. He is originally from Pittsburgh.He is moving back to Japan. He can't believe how fucked up the USA is. He didn't say that directly. He remarked in the level of crime, trash, and rudeness in American culture and can't take it anymore.He remarked that Japanese society is all about being respectful to others and focused on society as a whole. The USA is the opposite.Of course, I asked him to take me with him. :)

BrotherMayanrd

P.S. I am seeing a lot of pre-Wafer thought in articles and in comment section. Where they go wrong is that they think the USA can be fixed. It can't. Get over it.

I would be tempted to call your restaurant Kali Yuga's. I have been reading further in the works of Byung-Chul Han, a philosopher I discovered through posts from you and Miles, and highly recommend the recently published "In the Swarm: Digital Prospects." Han argues persuasively that in the online world of the digital "swarm" we are losing touch with reality, with one another, and with our very selves.

I've finally come up with my own idea for the most fabulously wealthy Grand Seer's

Indian restaurant:

Berman's Bharat Bistro.

It has quite an alliterative ring to it, no?

Now on to another subject - the other day I found a copy of The New York Times Book

Review at the library and it featured a review on David Frum's Trumpocracy and Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury. The reviewer of the first book (and probably the author) noted that there are people within the Trump Administration who think America can be saved, but only if it is purged. These sound like Christian fundamentalists to me, they are always obsessed about whether America is being saved or damned when a Democrat is in the Oval Office and exactly the opposite when a Republican is there. On a related note, Roman "Christian" Emperors Constantine and Theodosus I committed purges and they didn't save the Empire in the least, did they?

And here's the face of America in those Brockton murders - which the prosecutor alleges were part of a ritual.

"The heritage of Dutch mysticism speaks to universal Christianity. It’s not as well known, unfortunately, as it might be, in non-Dutch-speaking realms. This paper explores the writings of the anonymous, 16th-century female author of The Evangelical Pearl. Written in the Dutch vernacular and first published in 1537, the work proved to be a popular and influential one.

Bernard McGinn is the Naomi Shenstone Donnelley Professor Emeritus of Historical Theology and of the History of Christianity in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago."

Gd essay. This is clearly a he said/she said situation, and in the US, I thought that people were innocent until proven guilty. Airing one side of the story is hardly proof of anything. Woody is getting crucified because of the climate of the times. "Mob mentality" is the true guilty party here.

And yet, as I said a while back, from a declinist pt of view, it's all gd. We are committing cultural suicide. What cd be better?

Bro-

Yr friend might enjoy rdg my Japan bk, I'm thinking.

Mike-

Definitely no fast food. Customers will be encouraged to eat leisurely meals, while discussing the collapse of the nation.

@al-Q: I implore you to PLEASE be careful while out on your bicycle. The husband of a former colleague of mine was seriously injured while out on his bike when a douchebag motorist forced him off the road into a ditch, where he struck a utility pole. Both of his knees were completely wrecked, requiring extensive surgery from which he never did fully recover. I hesitate to use my headphones even while out walking in fear of getting run over by some asshole texting while driving.

@Dill--I noticed something else horrifying in one of the pictures that accompanied the story you posted: No snow on the ground. In Boston. In February.

Mike Kelly: Curry in a Hurry is already taken; it is a wonderful Indian restaurant on Lex and 28th in NYC that's open until 3AM. For those Wafers that make the trip, I also recommend checking out Kalustyan's, an international grocer, next door.

Dr. B: My humble suggestion for your Indian restaurant is "Wafer Veda," as Veda means knowledge in Sanskrit and fits with your intent to stimulate discussion about the collapse of the nation.

Also, I've noticed that many news outlets have replaced the words Latina and Latino with Latinx. I find this off putting and absurd. Has this cancer spread to Mexico yet?

Trumpo is ordering the Pentagon to have a military parade in DC. Cannot thk of a better way to showcase the empire's lust for war-- complete with music, spectacles etc.... Very exciting WAFERS. Getting a little verklempt.

As previously stated, the us military spends $1 Billion+ each year on military bands, orchestras, jazz ensembles, calypso reggae --all in military regalia. SPending 25K on tubas and 12K flutes. Thk about that the next time you cannot pay your health "care" insurance bill in the sht hole.

Perhaps at this military parade, they can also sell army T-shirts, navy mugs, air force pencils, etc...to showcase their lust for hustling/huckstering and war.

@BrotherMayanrd, Japanese culture is all about 'respect' was also observed by this reputed Amerikn journalist.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYQcU5VXde8

How did this shit culture manage to endure for 5500 years and here our wheels are coming off in mere 400 since Jamestown?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDofYtYO5fI&index=3&list=PLLyVseyiBWfwIrAFkAH045zjfMq4g9Jy5

“This is coming out of a culture that is quite happy to conceive of the void, to conceive of the infinite,” said Du Sautoy. “That is exciting to recognise, that culture is important in making big mathematical breakthroughs. "Despite developing sophisticated maths and geometry, the ancient Greeks had no symbol for zero, for instance, showing that while the concept zero may now feel familiar, it is not an obvious one."

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/sep/14/much-ado-about-nothing-ancient-indian-text-contains-earliest-zero-symbol"The development of zero as a mathematical concept may have been inspired by the region’s long philosophical tradition of contemplating the void and may explain why the concept took so long to catch on in Europe, which lacked the same cultural reference points. ..zero in mathematics underpins an incredible range of further work, including the notion of infinity, the modern notion of the vacuum in quantum physics, and some of the deepest questions in cosmology of how the Universe arose – and how it might disappear from existence in some unimaginable future scenario."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXGm9Vlfx4w“The Europeans, even when it was introduced to them, were like ‘Why would we need a number for nothing?’ said Du Sautoy.”

MB... I stand corrected by my wife (no surprises there). Mango lassi has arrived in India from the foreign shores. How can it not in this commercial age? Silly me! Danone brought it as a packaged food. Not to be left behind, Haldiram's, an Indian food proc Co has also launched theirs. Restaurants in metro cities have it on the menu, it seems. Have not see any traditional shops selling it yet. But may be we will get it this summer, who knows!

I keep thinking it can't get any worse - its a Hedges kind of thing - and then something like this happens. I don't know why I was so shocked to hear about it - I know that there is nothing the conscience-free capitalism of America will not exploit for its own purposes, but there is a part of me that continues to hope for change. Maybe its nothing more than denial in service of ego protection. Whatever.

www.truthdig.com/articles/country-without-heart/

Dill Pickle - the purging instinct sounds a bit like Nazism which was determined to purge the Reich of impure Jewish blood to save the purity of the blond, blue-eyed Aryan. Not exactly what Trump is advocating with his scapegoating of Latinos but close to it.

While we are on that topic, Trump has asked the Pentagon to stage a national military parade which sounds suspiciously like a rally to honor (worship?) the head of America's civic religion (which has replaced Christianity at the core of American spirituality).

MB - how far removed are we from the formative years of Hitler and Nazism?

1st, as far as that ad using MLK goes, I ask u2 put 2 post-its on yr bathrm mirror:

1. IT CAN AND WILL GET WORSE2. I'M LIVING AMONG A COLLECTION OF DEGRADED BUFFOONS

Every morning when you go to the bathrm, read these out loud.

As for Nazism, I'm a bit disappointed. How is it that Trumpi is allowing Jews and Muslims to walk freely in the streets? It's surely overdue for all of them to be wearing yellow stars and living in detention camps in Idaho. When, O Trumpi, when?

Professor- indeed I told him about your Japan book; he is getting a copy. We discussed Japanese culture extensively.

Good news Wafers! Trumpi isn't just all talk. While Our Dear Leader sits eating McDonalds and watching Faux on tee vee, his appointments are busy systemically dismantling the health, safety and environmental apparatus of the US. Here is David Clay Johnson:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y70q0mjujWk

So the PM of Canada makes a (bad) joke and the rightwing media in the USA goes nuts/meltsdown. These folks just can't take joke, can they? The quality of the rightwing commentariat in the USA is far from superb. Are these people really that dumb or are they just in it for a buck (or both?) Are they snowflakes?

"Peterson was also shaped by the cold war; he was obsessed as a young man with the power of rigid ideology to make ordinary people do terrible things. He collects Soviet realist paintings, in a know-your-enemy way, and named his first child Mikhaila, after Mikhail Gorbachev...His recent sold-out lectures in London had the atmosphere of revival meetings.

Quote from Peterson--“If you’re talking to a man who wouldn’t fight with you under any circumstances whatsoever, then you’re talking to someone for whom you have absolutely no respect,” he told Paglia last year, adding that it is harder to deal with 'crazy women' because he cannot hit them."

Meanwhile, political correctness is so out of control in Ithaca, New York, that if you are a white drama student you shouldn't bother competing for the lead role in the school play, because if you win they will shut the entire production down for reasons of "cultural appropriation." Protesters, who were applauded by a Cornell University professor no less, made this objection: "The young woman who was cast in this role has hazel eyes, blonde hair, and is the epitome of whiteness." Which to me sounds like the kind of language Germans were using in the 1930s when they were measuring people's noses to determine their Jewishness. Remind me again who the American Nazis are supposed to be?

Anyway, the Guardian article about Jordan Peterson is pretty much right that he is only a big name because of the idiot leftists who make him look more important than what he is. That guy is a hustler in every way shape and form and the idiot campus kids and the identity creeps make him into a star for the right.

Also, he doesn't practice what he preaches. He essentially wants a form of suppression of leftist ideas while he wants himself to have maximum freedom of speech.

I think people should listen to Norman Finkelstein's lecture to the British Communist party on J S Mills and political correctness.

The modus operandi of America nearly always makes me think of a severe narcissist or sociopath. The government and the attitudes of the population appear to reflect it. Read comments in American forums and you see most of them support this kind of behavior and way of thinking.

Imagine if a criminal invaded your house and when you attempted to defend your home to get the home invader out, he/she kills you and says this had to be done because it was out of self-defense; you were the aggressor when you attacked him/her in your own home. How dare you think of defending yourself from the home invader.

This is the way the US operates in Syria - invades the country without any moral basis and attacks anyone in Syria who tries to defend it's sovereignty and poorly justifies the attacks as being out of self-defense.

I never imagined, when this whole Orange Julius revolution began, that I'd actually come to agree with Scott Pruitt. But I do, I think the end of civilization might b a good thing for humans, a one step forward two steps back kinda thing.

Did anyone else enjoy watching Elon Musk blast his Tesla to Mars as much as me? This is a way better expression/remnant to leave behind than those dippy gold plates Sagan put on Voyager I. I always need cigarettes and coffee on long road trips, wouldn't car/rocket dude look better with a smoke hanging out his helmet? Like smoking, this is either a pleasurable moment or an elegant way to commit suicide.

I've been thinking abt the upcoming military parade in DC, as a demo of American 'strength'. It seems to me that this display of force reflects hollowness at the center--the military is all we have left, and it can't even win small wars. The show of strength is actually a show of weakness. This hollowness is mirrored in the personality of the president and in most American citizens. The show thus contributes to our collapse. Hopefully it will become an annual or semi-annual event; I wd certainly like to attend, perhaps buy myself a small tank. And hopefully we shall get involved in more wars, and spend trillions more on 'defense'. This follows the Roman Empire pattern--bleeding the Treasury for an endless charade, for pure stupidity. What sincere declinist could object?

The larger reality is the 'anthropology' of the situation, by which I mean the constellation of social and psychological factors that have brought us to this historical moment. "The fix is in" means that there is no reflexivity in the system. Neither the Trumpites nor the progs have the faintest idea of what is driving them, nor are they interested in finding out. Jimmy Carter, with his Christian background, was fond of saying, "Look at the log in your own eye before you criticize the mote (speck of dust) in the eye of your enemy." No bloc or political group in America has the slightest interest in this, which means we cannot escape our self-destructive fate. The Trumpites believe they are on the rt track; the progs foolishly think they can alter our trajectory. Two jokes shadow boxing with each other. And watching this absurd spectacle, and shaking their heads, are 172 Wafers, a handful of sane voices in a nation of clowns.

It seems I am learning something from Guru Sri Berm after all. Over dinner this evening, just as I asked my wife if she has seen the news of Trump's proposal for a military parade in DC, what crossed my mind was exactly this: "The show of strength is actually a show of weakness."

The Guardian article on Jordan Pederson was very good. I watched a bit of his lectures ie sermons online and could see immediately he was full of himself. And that translates into all the 'knowledge' he purports to be true. Clear Wafer eyes can see through him right away.

I was in Berlin when the Wall came down. Germans had set up tables in front of the Brandenburg Gate, on which they had piled the periphernalia of the Red Army: commissars' hats, badges, the works. And as I picked them up and handled them, I realized that they were relics: the spirit had gone out of them. They were just skeletons, dead items. Yrs later, I understood that the same thing wd be true of the artifacts of the American military, and I suspect that day is not that far away. This Trumpi military parade is a clear precursor of that. Great bravado, but the eagle won't be flying high much longer.

Sorry but the Guardian article was a hit job. Quotes pulled out of context to 'prove' an already problematic ideology doesn't prove anything about Jordan Peterson. There are no arguments to back up their arguments against Peterson. His quotes about women were completely pulled out of context to fit that ideology. The article also made it sound that he sides with the right, alt-right or Nazi's and in fact on many occasions he has expressed he is not. The article does not mention how many disillusioned leftists also agree with him due to the rabid Identitarians on the left there are and how they've taken over the left. Which I'm guessing the writer of the article is also a proud member of this far leftist idiocy. But listen for yourselves.

Boar's Head - That's not the first time the media's done this. Right after Katrina and for several months thereafter, the media in general and CNN and Anderson Cooper in particular called The Lower Ninth Ward here in New Orleans "The Lower Nine," apparently to give themselves that elusive street cred because I never heard it phrased that way before or since.

polecat - Yes, the Nazis did do bloody purges. So did the Communists. So, too, did some of the Christian emperors in the ancient Roman Empire, and sometimes so did the Christians themselves.

Gunnar - What Scott Pruitt calls for we will never have: an “honest, open, transparent debate” about climate science “so the American people can be informed” because then the Deniers will lose big. What will happen is the Deniers will lie, and the people who know the truth about global warming will fail to make themselves understood, become apoplectic, or both.

What a bunch of mooks. They are so racist that they do not realize that Esmeralda, a Roma character whose mother is French, is Caucasian. In fact, many Roma nowadays are blue-eyed and blonde. Why? Because "White" encompasses the whole Ethnic groups that make up the Caucasian group and second, they married with lighter skinned Caucasians.

The Political correctness crusade would be funny if it wasn't itself so sad in how quickly it embraces and attempts to enshrine racial stereotypes. I remember people getting angry that "white people" were playing Arabs and middle easterns for the Gods of Egypt and thought... these people do realize that Arabs are white? I mean their argument many of times are Semites aren't white which is a White nationalist argument you find on stormfront, however, they crucified Scarlet Johanson, a jewish woman, a a white woman stealing asian women's roles for the Ghost in the Shell movie. I mean are jews white or not? It appears that whiteness in the PC crowds eyes aligns with that of White Supremacists ideals of what whiteness is. Its hilarious.

Your Indian restaurant has to be extra kitschy. People will then whip out their phones, snapchat it to all of their friends, and then post it on twitter with #TajMahtummy #YOLO! Or better yet, download the food delivery app Favor because they can't be bothered to walk a few blocks.

On another note, I've decided to learn to speak Spanish. One of the few benefits of living in Dallas, TX (the 2nd most kitschy place in TX behind Austin) is the large Hispanic population. I know where to look and who to converse with. I hope to visit Spain at some point this year or next.

Post agricultural pathologies and alienation due to hyper-complexity.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I9QJVNas5k

The downsides of domestication, what did people expect from a gov and species that was willing to genocide the Buffalo to genocide the Indians, or those uppity Passenger Pigeons to kill that obnoxious Great American Chestnut Tree, etc.

While We Wafers get it, you can't say the rest of the USA wasn't warned as Omarosa says she fears the USA won't be OK under Trumpi:https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/feb/08/omarosa-manigault-newman-trump-us-tweets

Here's something interesting, Naomi Oreskes, history of science prof at Harvard says opposition to climate change:"It's not about the facts, not about the science. Underneath all of this is a fear that capitalism has failed. That new rules and regulations and carbon taxes to fight climate change are somehow an assault on our freedom and liberty — that we'll become Communists." Better dead than red, I suppose.

By all means, bring on a military parade (might as well go out with a bang or two). I'm hoping Trumpi will have them goose-step. That would be kind of classy. Another nail in the coffin of a dying empire...

I love a parade! (apologies to Ms. Ethel Merman); also, too bad Bourvil isn't a live to sing C'est Partout!

I love a parade,the tramping of feet,I love every beat I hear of a tax payer drum.I love a parade, when I hear a military bandI just want to stand and cheer as they come.That rat-a tat-tat, the blare of a $12,000 tax payer military horn.That rat-a tat-tat, a bright imperial uniform;The sight of a nuclear drill will give me a thrill,I thrill at the propaganda skill of everything us military.I love a parade, a handful of brainwashed vets,A line of indoctrinated cadets or any farcical brigade,For I love a parade!

I am trying to imagine how NPR would deal with this same subject. The fact that Lincoln wanted to deport all the ex-slaves would be minimized, if covered at all, since he is a Good Guy.

You know you are in a failed state when you need to go to foreign media to get a balanced, coherent picture of your own country's history. The idea of Americans of any race having a serious discussion about the Civil War and slavery seems impossible to me. TV and move 'history' has made this kind of understanding rare among even the educated.

Somebody told me you have to go to London to learn Sanskrit as an Indian. It's getting to be that you have to listen to the BBC to learn American history. From colony to 'nation' back to colony.

Here in the self-absorbed, narcissistic DC area, the big concern about Trump's stupid parade is that the military vehicles would completely tear up Pennsylvania Avenue. Like it would be any great loss if some douchebag CONgressman ended up being late for work because they hit a car-swallowing pothole.

@TZD--indeed, and the fact that Americans are so unwilling to acknowledge that what they have been reaping overseas is now coming home to sow its venom on our own shores continually amazes me.

"A Stockton teen has been sentenced to more than six years in prison for driving drunk while livestreaming the crash that killed her younger sister...prosecutors say Sanchez was livestreaming on Instagram while driving"

I’ve been hanging out in “C. G. Jung land” to get a better understanding of his ideas. One discovery: a podcast called Speaking of Jung (https://speakingofjung.com/podcast/), which features discussions / interviews with Jungian analysts, authors etc.

Of interest to declinists may be that several episodes touch on Trump, seeking explanation. They mostly view him as a mirroring of the shadow self of America. (They then go on to be quite hopeful about people processing this, which I doubt but the framing is interesting).

Another place I have been exploring is the work of Bruno Latour, a French anthropologist who looks at unusual groups and cultures (scientists, climate scientists, etc.). He uses unusual metaphors and analogies which I find intriguing. Here is an interesting lecture of his on “living at the end of time in time” where he explores catastrophism: https://youtu.be/jgyrnecHWMg

"Quote from Peterson--'If you’re talking to a man who wouldn’t fight with you under any circumstances whatsoever, then you’re talking to someone for whom you have absolutely no respect,' he told Paglia last year, adding that it is "harder to deal with 'crazy women' because he cannot hit them."

Sick stuff guys."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The last quote is entirely out of context. A favorite tactic of our MSM who appear to still be worked up over this embarassing interview:

MB - Your next to last sentence in Coming to Our Senses relates that then (1989) you were still unclear "whether we are entering a new Dark Age or a new Renaissance". What would you say today?

On Peterson - he reminds me of a male Ann Coulter, famous for being outrageous and little esle

American as narcissistic - been that way for a long time. We are, after all, a "shining city on the hill", the New Jerusalem, entitled by God to secure the land God has given us and "civilize" the Natives (even if that means slaughtering them) and anyone else who interferes with our birthright; Exceptional, as a doctrine of faith. When we do it, its right, because we are pure and would never act out of self-interest.

On the Parade - sounds to me more like an event organized to celebrate the Presidency of the Great Orange Mane-One as the greatest American Hero ever - "believe me"

Finally, this from the great Isaac Asimov in 1980 on the idiocy of the typical American citizen: "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant threat winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge'". Or, as the Donald might say, my ignorance is better than your knowledge because no one has even been as ignorant as me.

MB, I am reading Are We There Yet? and thoroughly enjoying the essays. I wish I could have been in Berlin when the wall came down. Here in the states all we heard was that Mr. Raygun had saved the day and made the world a little safer for democracy. BS through and through. The Murkans lapped that BS up and damned if they're still not lapping that BS up. The so-called "correction" taking place on Wall Street is more of that BS we're supposed to believe. The truth of the matter is that the economy never quite recovered from the previous bubble bursting 10 years ago. Ten years of printing money and giving it away to the wealthy has done little to change the state of the nation. Your chapter on karma and the economy spells it out very clearly, MB. We are lucky to have your wisdom and I am proud to say I am a Wafer.

Clearly, Waferdom is the most spiritually evolved state of consciousness in the entire universe.

Lobo-

Best one-vol study of Jung is by Anthony Storr, in the Modern Masters Series (short but terrific).

Dio-

Well, I'm guessing WAF ch. 4 is as gd as the BBC. Maybe better! Of course, the # of Americans who will read it is abt .00000001%.

librarian-

Need to help u out here. My initials are GSWH. Restaurant will be located in SW Bulgaria. As for yr sentence in Bulgarian: help *me* out: what does the golem hafta do with anything?

Wafers-

Here are a few thoughts on Jordan Peterson, abt whom everybody seems to be excited these days. Just my humble opinion, cd be wrong.

In "The Brothers Karamazov," the Grand Inquisitor says: "It is the everlasting goal of human beings to find someone or something to worship." Regarding Peterson: why can't Americans just say, "Here's a guy with some interesting ideas"? But no: we have to project God onto him. We become fanatical for him or against him (which are 2 sides of the same coin). Rational discussion and analysis: forget it; it's limbic brain all the way. Like all false or semi-true gurus, he becomes The Answer. It's "Life of Brian" and "The True Believer" (Hoffer) all over again, and this pathetic transference addiction never ends.

For fuck's sake, who on this earth has all the answers? All of these gurus have clay feet; all of them pass into oblivion. I remember the Rajneesh craze of the 80s. Who cares abt Rajneesh now, and who will care abt Peterson 5 yrs from now? You want to yell, "Stop this mishugas!" But no: it's like the annual 'new' diet bk. The guru fades, and then--there is a new one, a new Answer. Until he/it fades, and then...etc. The more Jacques Lacan cautioned his disciples abt transference, the more fanatically attached to him they became. It all reminds me of a line from Andre Malraux: "There is no such thing as a grown up person." And Americans are the most childish of them all.

When Hitler began his ascent to power in the 1920s, most people viewed him as a rabble-rouser and clown. Yet, somehow, the man who led the assassination of prominent communists and social democratic leaders, and imprisoned a large portion of the nation in concentration camps, ultimately, won the support of a vast majority of Germans. Will this be the case w/Trump and the US? Hitler found his greatest support in the build-up to war and Trump may do the same. Trump needs a war to boost his poll numbers. He needs a war to make him look strong, and distract from his incompetence. The parallels to the dark period between the two world wars cannot be overlooked.

May I recommend a future running mate for brittney carulli? Belen Aldecosea. When we have rid the world of men and toxic masculinity, these women could provide the leadership we really need. http://www.azfamily.com/story/37460275/student-allegedly-flushes-emotional-support-hamster-then-blames-airline

Just a suggested modification to your observation about shared patterns between 1930s Germany and 2010s California re: police cooperation with rightwingers:

There WAS an ethos of rightist authoritarianism and anti-democracy in the police culture of late Weimar, but it was largely monarchist or old-line conservative in nature. Such people were equally at home suppressing Bolsheviks AND Nazis. In comparison, the documentable instances of police cooperation with out-and-out racists like the Nazis (and today´s US white supremacists) before the Nazi takeover of power in 1933 ought perhaps to be described with a different adjective than "common."

What is really frightening is the speed with which a few of these individual policemen who had enthusiastically suppressed Nazis before 1933 turned around and became mainstays of the nazified Gestapo after 1935. In the end, they didn´t really care about anything except doing a good job for whatever regime had the smarts to employ them. The Nazis were smart enough to capitalize on this - as did the Communists did after 1945, where some ex-Gestapo people went back to persecuting ex-Nazi true believers in the German Democratic Republic.

Whatever sympathy for the racist right has developed in today´s US police, the large numbers of APOLITICAL cops (many of them non-white) who will do their job in authoritarian ways whatever political changes happen to the system´s leadership remains the bigger threat.

MB and all, "I understood that the same thing [the spirit leaving the Soviet military artifacts] wd be true of the artifacts of the American military, and I suspect that day is not far away. The Trumpi military parade is a clear precursor of that."

FWIW, yesterday I saw in the Times of London website a political cartoon of the Orange Crassus viewing his military parade and he was dressed in Napoleon Bonaparte's outfit, and had his hand tucked into it too.

On Jordan Peterson: one of tendencies of this professor-hustler that makes him so dangerous is that he sees a lot of threats and dangers -real and imaginary- coming from the left, while failing to the same sort of things coming from the right, some of which even he has managed to unleash, or might have. Case in point: he did not forsee in the slightest that his plans to unveil a website "that would help students and parents identify and avoid 'corrupt' courses," especially if brought to fruition, "might," in his words, "add excessively to current polarisation." A backlash put an end to that little hustle.

Is it possible for everyone to live a good life within our planet’s limits? Only if we make radical changes to national economies"If all seven billion or more people are to live well within the limits of our planet, then radical changes are required. At the very least, these include dramatically reducing income inequality and switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy as quickly as possible. But, most importantly, wealthy nations such as the US and UK must move beyond the pursuit of economic growth, which is no longer improving people’s lives in these countries, but is pushing humanity ever closer towards environmental disaster."

Never made the connection until now. But the work of film director David Lynch and it's focus on the terribly dark spirit that hides just below all of the formica laminate and just behind all of the cookie-cutter white picket fence houses. Watching the new Twin Peaks series that aired last year in particular. Makes me quite sentimental about the original effort, back in '89 or '90. Both fantastic productions. Makes you laugh out loud at how bizarrely psychological we Americans are, and how bizarrely psychological small towns are in this country.

Julian Baggini's review of Steven Pinker's new book Enlightenment Now: A Manifesto for Science, Reason, Humanism, and Progress makes a couple of references to John Gray:https://literaryreview.co.uk/never-had-it-so-good

Both Baggini and Gray have written critically of Pinker's "The Better Angels of Our Nature"

I have a nagging suspicion that Trumpi et al is going to wreck the economy: massive tax cuts, enormous deficits, and now huge fiscal stimulus may overheat the economy. Couldn't this lead to hyperinflation? Maybe this is our Suez moment: when China refuses to finance our deficits anymore and the us dollar crashes. If not our Suez moment, maybe our Wiemar one?

Hunter S Thompson: "This maybe the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it—that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.”

DioGenes, an Indian friend told me that the best place to learn Sanskrit is actually Germany (maybe just his opinion). Which brings me to the comparisons between Weimar and the US: the Germans had a culture, Goethe, Kant, Hegel and so on and on and on; compared to that, America has almost nothing, except a foundational myth inspired by the Old Testament to hide the real basis of its foundation: genocide and slavery. Nazism will not be a dark chapter in the history of the US; it will be the end.

And don't doubt for a second that fascism is coming to the US. I won't recommend Sebastian Haffner's book again, but, if I read it correctly, the biggest reason why Germany embraced Nazism was a sense of humiliation (national and individual). If that is a valid analogy then Trump is extremely dangerous, because I think the Americans know the world is laughing at Trump (and them).

You are a fascinating source of quotes, MB. I like to track them down. Andre Malraux didn't actually say this, it turns out. He was quoting a priest.

Yalom’s Cure: Stanford’s famous psychotherapist onscreen – and it’s fun!André Malraux once asked a parish priest who had listened to confessions for half a century what he had learned about mankind. On the first page of his 1968 Anti-Memoirs, the French writer recorded the priest’s reply: “First of all people are much more unhappy than one thinks…and then the fundamental fact is that there is no such thing as a grown up person.”

GSWH: Apologies for any acronymic acrimony I may have caused. Loosely translated from the Bulgarian: Take a big bite, but don't say a big word.

Wafers: Regarding Jordan Peterson, he strikes me as someone walking firmly in Marshall McLuhan's footsteps. I know Camille Paglia already made the comparison between them as being influential Canadian thinkers, but I think the comparison goes a little deeper. Peterson has talked at length about talking his way through ideas, skipping almost associatively along a train of thought in open dialog, to arrive at some conclusion or a common thread. McLuhan famously did the same thing, pre-stroke, from the couch in his office. Given that Peterson is (or was) a working therapist, perhaps they even share the couch as a tool of their respective trades. Anyway, at bottom Peterson and McLuhan are pattern-matching generalists. Their method is to find patterns among sometimes disparate disciplines, theories, experiences, etc., to expose an otherwise hidden or ignored commonality. The patterns uncovered are sometimes insightful and surprising and sometimes cockamamy, but they're always interesting.

I'm the new wafer who suggested Vindictive Vindaloo. That sounds too negative. Maybe "Vindication Vindaloo"? Vindication for pointing out signs of decline.

Or how about: V is for Vindaloo? A theme restaurant. Our hero-chef Vigilante in a mask, V, surprise-greets each customer just as the Vindaloo spice hits the brain and whispers: "It's over..."

Allow me as a mostly outsider to put forward a doubt over waferism, which is that I think feminism has more of a point than usually allowed here. The gender of the posters here skews pretty male. I have doubts about defending Woody Allen. And truth is Mel Brooks was always better. Truth is... America would probably replace Woody with Lena Dunham though.

Now let me say something that will make you very jealous. I plan to spend tomorrow relaxing at the Jimmy Carter Museum.

We are being deluged by posts! I can't keep up with you guys. Had lunch with friends in Mex City yesterday at a Japanese restaurant; mutton muglai was not on the menu.

Schmucko-

Always, always capitalize Wafer. Otherwise, you will indeed be a shmuck. Same goes for Waferism. Por favor! As for women on the blog, I wd love it if more participated, but my own experience is that since abt 1972, they mostly lost interest in protesting capitalism or the VN war or imperialism, and got involved in identity politics. A big mistake, and a real loss, not just for this blog. Anyway, this blog doesn't have much respect for political correctness, as you know, so I'm guessing it will remain heavily male. Which I wish were not the case, but Wafers tend not to regard identity politics as ultimately very meaningful.

Esca-

Because they are intellectually brilliant and ontologically stupid. Once you realize in yr gut, and not just in a 'flirting', occasional sorta way, that It's Over, calling for left-wing social change is utterly meaningless. The alternative is the coward's route--fighting Evil wherever it occurs (a project with no end, and actually simplistic)--or you can show genuine courage, pack yr bags, and leave the country. Hedges wrote a bk called War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, and is a prime example of that indictment: he's endlessly at war with reality, which gives his life meaning. This is actually a form of addiction. What wd be meaningful for him if he moved to a small town in Italy, for example? So instead, he writes an "It's Over" essay abt once a yr, then goes back to The War on Evil.

Of course, fighting evil is sometimes justified, but it depends on the context. In the American context, it makes no sense at all--as some progs, like Hedges, do realize on some level, but are too scared to confront this. John Steppling writes:

"The war machine of the United States cannot be stopped. No amount of protest or organizing can stop this train heading toward the cliffs. How many survive the inevitable crash is the crucial question."

What battering ram wd be required to get this fact into the incredible thickness of Hedges' head? It will happen when pigs fly in geese formation over the White House.

librarian-

I don't agree. Peterson seems to be reworking known ideas, whereas McLuhan was the 1st to argue that technology was not neutral. Most people in the West have not caught up to him. 60 yrs later, they still think it's a question of how tech is used.

Sav-

Yes, I know; I was just trying to make that post less convoluted.

Meanwhile, here's some more from John Steppling:

"Academics will do whatever is needed to hold onto their jobs...They work for the corporation...Where are the public intellectuals who live on the margins? They exist, but they have trouble gaining visibility. And if they do find an audience, the snarky white post grad student will recoil. Why? Because any voice from the margin is a threat.

"A deep anger...seems to be surfacing more frequently in irrational outbursts. Honestly, if someone sat down and collected data on internet comment threads, the conclusion wd be that this is an emotionally starved society, enraged and unable to cope with daily life. [Trollfoons, are you listening?]

"The citizens of the United States...live lives devoid of joy and wonder...I see none of that wonder in young children. They are often too busy learning to operate their cell phone."

He quotes Henry Giroux:

"Students are now taught to ignore human suffering and to focus mainly on their own self interests, and by doing so they are being educated to exist in a political and moral vacuum."

re: JP, I dunno. His use of Joe Campbell to source his mythological comparisons is enuf to drive me to drink! Lol. He's just not a decent scholar, so a comparison to the scholarly eminence in Mcluhan's work falls deaf on me.

The reason why I think Jordan Peterson is a Charlatan and the “Stupid Man’s Intellectual” is because he too is caught up in, and continues to perpetuate, this highly delusional Far Right Wing Conspiracy Theory they disparagingly call “Cultural Marxism.”

These guys actually believe that a small group of Jewish Philosophers in Frankfurt Germany are single-handedly responsible, through their writings, for completely destroying Western Civilization and American culture.

Well, I just wrote a Masters Thesis on the Frankfurt School, and read every book by Marcuse, Adorno, Horkheimer, Benjamin, and Fromm, and NONE of what they wrote in their books even remotely resembles the delusional shit these Far Right Wing Nuts are vomiting out of their mouths.

First, we know that Far Right Wingers don’t read books, or a least serious books, and clearly haven’t read the books of the Frankfurt School Philosophers. Or if they did read them, they clearly haven’t understood what they read. But as group these Far Right Wingers all think they’re SO smart, as they just going around parroting each other literally without know what the hell they’re talking about.....”It’s the Cultural Marxists of the Frankfurt School who are destroying Western Civilization and American culture!!!!!”.....Delusional to the core these Nuts! See below...

I have enjoyed your three great books on the decline and fall of the US. I too have opted for the monastic option, considering that at the moment I do not have the means to leave the U.S.S. Sinking States.

There are a few people commenting on Jordan Peterson, my take of watching a few of this talks, a few interesting things to say but over all, m'eh. Take or leave him. He is sort of looking backwards to see forwards. The original ideas are not making the big bucks, or building more systems or growing the economy. He is of seems to be cashing in on something, but the view of today and tomorrow are more of what you write about, also Richard Heinberg, John Micheal Greer to just name a few. Searching for something outside of this consumerist pile of excrement that we have been creating.

Well, enough of this. I have no television, have not had one for decades. Reading a great deal. I have a break in my gig life in a month and a half. Have three books I am looking forward to getting into. Ruskin's 'Unto This Last and other Writings', Raymond Roussell's "Inpressions of Africa", and Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Where do we go from here; Chaos or Community?".

On the American Military Machine that has been gobbling up the world at least since the end of WWII - it doesn't matter which wing of the One Party is in power. There are actually 3 certainties in American life: death, taxes and increases in military expenditures. The new 2 year financial plan just passed by Congress gives more to the Pentagon than Trump requested, $700 billion, a 24% increase over 2017, most of which will go into the coffers of military contractors. How else could we make the world safe for international corporations and the American dollar. A bill to protect Big Business sold the people as money needed to keep us safe from those nasty and dangerous towel-heads.

@MB -- "...since abt 1972, they mostly lost interest in protesting capitalism or the VN war or imperialism, and got involved in identity politics."

I think the same thing has happened among minorities, particularly blacks and Hispanics. Their arguments of discrimination would be so much more palatable to non-wealthy whites if they couched them in class-based rather than indentitarian terms. Telling an unemployed white factory worker or single mother working two jobs that he/she are the beneficiaries of "white privilege" is a perfect way to drive them into the arms of racist charlatans like Trump.

@Schmucko -- when America finally and very deservedly goes down in flames, feminism will become just as irrelevant as every other idiotic, navel-gazing American-bred, feel good "ism" and partisan rallying cry. True declinists accept this fact and are at peace with it.

I think the new restaurant should be called 'The H1 Bistro' and should be staffed by an Indian outsourcing conglomerate.

It's interesting that the public intellectuals –mb, Paul Kingsnorth, John Zerzan et al.– with the integrity to name a lost cause what it is are invariably lambasted for "giving up hope". The trick of course is to reach the "hope beyond (false) hope". This does take some real courage, as it's a leap of faith to despair of resolving certain problems in life, such as the calamitous trajectory of American empire.

What Hedges and others would find, if they dared to despair of fixing insoluble predicaments, is that on the other side of despair is the opportunity to live in truth; something of far greater and more enduring value. I'm reminded of Chalmers Johnson at the very end of his life, propped up in a chair facing the Pacific Ocean and repeating over and over, "I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do..." Brilliant man though he was, Johnson never confronted the fact that there was nothing to be done, and that it was okay to acknowledge this reality.

I guess the powers that be allow the mob and masses to focus on identity politics because like someone said the only lesson learned from the 60's protests is that you can't change anything really important.

The people who run the show need powerless, selfish, petty people to govern. Such people never question anything important and only protest something if it effects them, and then it is easy to deal with on the part of whoever has power because no one else is willing the help the person with a legitimate complaint about anything out because the person with a problem has to depend on shallow selfish and self absorbed people to care and help them out. Aint gonna happen.

I had an employer I suspected of suffering from anti-social personality disorder one time and I read up a lot of books about this type of personality. I emailed lots of experts for book titles and answers to questions. I was shocked when a PhD in psychology told me he had been an upper level recruiter for several large corporations and they deliberately recruit such people to serve in high places. He said they were desired because they were kick ass to everyone below them on the totem pole and would do as they were told. It was understood that being antisocials they could not help but break all kinds of corporate policies and laws along the way so when they were not needed anymore they could easily be gotten rid of.

It makes me sick to live in a sick enough society the only way to get things done is to have psychopathic people as leaders getting things done. Of course I do not think such is needed but what I think is not going to be listened to.

Bill Hicks - on minorities and class-based arguments. I think you are absolutely right. Identity politics is divisive by definition and plays into the hands of the elite power structure which benefits from lower classes dividing themselves into cells based on identity which keeps them divided against themselves. A united front based on class alone would at least have a better chance of prying some of the surplus of American culture out of the hands of the elite.

I watched 'Only the Brave' (I scrwd up title in prev post) a second time and havta upgrade my review. It is one of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen. The writers, director, producers, worked closely with surviving families to make it as authentic as possible, truly remarkable. American hypocrisy exposed: after all the fires in CA how this isn't nominated Best Picture makes me do the Wafer head shake.

One thing Sheldi-Hedges gets right is the fact the religious right has swallowed a toxic pill of Christo-Fascism. Colorado Springs lost a police officer in line of duty a week or so ago, the teevee stations broadcast the funeral. It was eye opening, his partner said 'he never once questioned his beliefs.' The occasion was held @ New Life Church an evangelical mega-church with over 10,000 members. A few yrs back Ted Haggard nearly brought it down with revelations he was a methhead/homosexual massage parlor kind of guy. But it goes on - the widow's eulogy was very revealing. It seemed rehearsed, very little emotion, almost like she was prepared for this day. Her remarks were rooted in the Bible - Romans ch12vs1-7. To paraphrase she emphasized submission to all authority b/c the authorities have been appointed over you by God. Complete loyalty to the state or face the wrath of god's anointed for 'they don't bear the sword for nothing' you have nothing to fear if you haven't done anything wrong. Tell this to the mentally ill AND jews in Hitler's Germany. Scary stuff indeed.

Do not plead to the Lord to take you now! WE NEED YOU MORE THAN EVER. Poor Hedges. Every week he barks up the wrong tree...but perhaps someday in the not too distant future he'll see the light and join our blog. I want to be the first to welcome him home.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/09/america-dropped-26171-bombs-2016-obama-legacy"In May 2013, I interrupted President Obama during his foreign policy address at the National Defense University. I had just returned from visiting the families of innocent people killed by US drone attacks in Yemen and Pakistan, including the Rehman children who saw their grandmother blown to bits while in the field picking okra. Speaking out on behalf of grieving families whose losses have never been acknowledged by the US government, I asked President Obama to apologize to them. As I was being dragged out, President Obama said: “...[platitudes]...”"

How about a portrait of the mangled body of that grandmother for the Smithsonian?

It continually amazes me just what a bunch of emotional babies even the most prominent Americans are. For example, take the case of this openly gay skier who--not undeservedly--called out Pence for his homophobia, but then completely discredited his own position by refusing to meet with the Veep. Here he had a golden opportunity probably no other gay person has ever had--to speak with the Veep directly and try to get him to understand the bigotry gays face. Maybe if he'd done so in a courteous and respectful manner he might have had a chance to get Pence to see gays as human beings rather than subversive demons (scoff if you want, but you never know unless you try). Instead he chose to be a just another virtue-signalling douchebag--in other words a typical liberal.

Meanwhile, I remember as a very young man carrying a condom in my wallet whenever I went out on the weekends "just in case." Don't think I ever had the opportunity to use it, but maybe the problem was that I just wasn't thinking big enough: Lawsuit: Weinstein ordered staff to keep ‘condoms & erectile pills’ always handy. Let us not ever forget that this the same Harvey Weinstein who was best buddies with the Clintons and whom Botoxface hesitated to condemn when the allegations first broke even though his abusive actions were an open secret in Hollywood. I'm sure all those women who've come forward against Weinstein are just more "bimbo eruptions" out to make America's would-be Queen look bad.

https://jakubmarian.com/corruption-perceptions-index-in-south-and-central-america/Do you know which South American countries are the least corrupt? Take a look at the following scores, according to Transparency International (higher numbers mean less corruption):

Jjarden, a Beautiful Jewel, While you may disagree w Jordan Peterson he is no slouch as a scholar in his ( mine too). You may have google scholar or lexus nexus where you are. You dont work at McGill, Harvard and the U of Toronto ( Full Prof) without reading a serious book or two and contributions to orienting literature by being a twit. You may disagree with him and certainly like most academics his ideas are incremental advances on prior work. He is a highly effective popularizer ( a rare talent) of core ideas and approaches that many of us use in caring for patients. Jjarden, lamentably, it does not appear that your masters course has prepared you for advancing logical arguments. Yes, the Franfurt School were neo marxists and disagreeing w their views does not make anyone an antisemite.

Dr Berman I read you and Chris Hedges. But you are right on. The trouble with Hedges is he still thinks the people will raise up> What a joke, the people are to dumb to ever raise up, plus they are the reason we are in this mess. I just wish Hedges would please pass the pipe. What ever he is smoking i want some.What is coming the USA way is not going to be good. Any country that puts Trump in office needs to fall hard.I finally met a guy with some brains the other day where he told be he hated Clinton but trump was worse, so he did not vote for the first time. He said he did not want to be blamed for what is coming.Keep up the good work.Truly Mark

We talk a lot about the micro reflecting the macro on this blog. One crucial point that isn't mentioned often enough about Hedges, is that for a guy who believes in such a gloomy future, he still had FOUR KIDS with his wife. And THAT's the reason he will never say "ah, screw all this. I am off to drink cocktails in Hawaii and watch the collapse living off my royalties and online lectures". He can't leave his children behind and he doesn't strike me as someone who's going to move with his wife and kids to an ecovillage to eat beetroots for the rest of his life. I think deep down he *knows* it's over, but because it's too hard to admit that the future for his four kids is really fucked, he keeps lying to himself with talks of Revolution. It's tragic really.

Bill Moyers actually interrogates Hedges on precisely that issue in this 2012 interview. Hedges' answer says it all. The part is from 42:15 to 44:00:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmDflXQPuTs&t=2599s

Well, Russia Today has an opinion piece that recounts some particulars of a UN report on the social/economic conditions in Alabama, California, West Virginia, Georgia, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. and pretty much agrees that Trump has accelerated the decline of the United States.

I think the reason is a lot more psychological/ontological than that. His wife is Canadian, I believe; he cd certainly move the entire family up north (or anywhere else, really, when you think abt it). People relocate all the time. Hedges is a patriot; he wants to US to recover, in the face of the obvious fact that it can't.

--Jjarden, lamentably, it does not appear that your masters course has prepared you for advancing logical arguments. Yes, the Franfurt School were neo marxists and disagreeing w their views does not make anyone an antisemite.--

First of all most of your argument was completely non-sensical. We get it you are a Peterson fanboy, however, your argument is not "advancing logical arguments" as you are doing nothing but a "nu uh" argument. If you are going to insult someone on here make sure you do not come off as a bootlicking fanboy. Learn to think for yourself and not look to your god, peterson. Also, Jordan's work in the profession of Psychology was practically non-existent. He by his own words was a nobody until he took a stand on the Pronoun debate in Canada.

Just a reminder: let's not attack people personally, i.e. try to avoid ad hominem arguments, and instead discuss the evidence pro and con. Please, smear trollfoons and public figures (Botox Face), but not each other.

ps: Kanye: Regarding Hedges' response, I'm not sure he answered the question of how he could bring yet another child into the world. But beyond that, I believe a distinction hasta be made between fighting to save the environment, which makes a lot of sense to me (and with which, I am in agreement with Hedges), and fighting to save the US, which I think is a fool's errand. Regarding the latter, he and other progs are persistently playing the fool. But the ecological question is a worldwide one, hardly limited to the US. It might even come under the category of the positive side of Dual Process. And being a worldwide issue, one hardly hasta live in the US to fight that fight. I don't see Hedges' decision to remain in the US as being one of family considerations, as I said b4. Rather, like Trump, he wants to make America great again--a true patriot. At this pt in American history, I doubt there is a political position more stupid that that.

My point about Hedges' answer in the interview was precisely that his lack of an answer to Moyers' question IS the answer. B.M -"How could you bring a fourth child into such a forlorn future?" - C.H - "that's a very good question". That's what's eating him up - his life choices contradict what he preaches.

I am a bit confused by your last point regarding fighting for the environment vs. fighting for the US. Derrick Jensen in my opinion has made it clear that humans have fucked the planet for good and that the only Environmental fight left for activists/Wafers is:a. "palliative care" - preserving what's left before the system crashes for good and another one rises from the ashes. The NMI option in other wordsb.Speeding the crash as fast as possible - "bad is good".

Hedges is SO far away ontologically from both these options. So his fight for the US really is a defense mechanism. It's a facade, an act. But he has no other choice.

Hedges' audience consists of people who think #RESIST-ing "fascist" Trump includes lionizing the FBI and CIA and depicting Robert Mueller as (literally) Superman. Viva la revolucion!-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The "Purple Revolution"/Resist is literally corporate backed, and, ofc, MSM approved. They even had their very own Pepsi commercial.

MB - emailed a local friend with background in anthropology yesterday to suggest that he might want to read "Wandering God". His replied that he already had: "I love this book! I think it is the best of the 3. For awhile in my research career I was involved in looking at evolutionary beginnings of spirituality and its environmental influences and even edited and contributed to a special issues journal on it." His 2 essays were published in Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture.

A question about Wandering and Coming - I kept expecting to find Thomas Merton mentioned, especially his Seven Story Mountain. Wondering why he was not referenced.

I'm part of a progressive discussion group that meets at a local library every other week to talk about local, state and national issues. After considering health care costs, the national debt, that America is no longer a democracy or republic but a plutocracy, someone asked what can the average citizen do to help. To which I replied: "Nothing. The days for protests, voting drives, resistance and citizen participation are over. We fought the noble cause and lost. The America you and I learned about in high school and may have lived for a time is gone - what is left of its structures, institutions and ideals are as shadows of memories. Time to admit, accept, mourn, grieve and move on." Acceptance of this heresy was not universal.

“Sir, we’re doing it to prevent a bomb from going off in Times Square,” Mattis replied.

Regarding Hedges, I read several of his books when they were first published about a decade ago, and after awhile he got to sounding like a broken record to me. I eventually came to equate reading him as being the literary equivalent of watching The Daily Show--for the true declinist its all just empty calories of little nutritional value. Like Kunstler, Hedges doesn't seem to grasp that there is a limited value to making the same points over and over in only slightly different ways. They would both be better served if they scaled back their blogging, and instead of trying to write a whole new essay once or twice a week would wait until they actually have a new point to make. I guess they're afraid that if they did that, their loyal readers would gradually abandon them. That's what sets Wafers apart--we don't need to have MB continually provide us with a new "fix," and instead are able to provide our own interesting points of view.

"Also, Jordan's work in the profession of Psychology was practically non-existent. He by his own words was a nobody until he took a stand on the Pronoun debate in Canada."

JBP work has been cited thousands of times and had a good selling book a few years ago. He has over 100 peer reviewed publications. Worked for years as a clinical psychologist--this is non-existent? Wow!!! By a being a "nobody" he did not mean as a psychologist but rather as public persona and perhaps a controversialist. I have used some of Petersons research over the years in my work. The points made by "cos" fairly innocuous and straightforward and matters of observable fact. That this comment provoked such a strong emotional and hostile reaction is interesting. Is it the post (again anodyne pointing out the obvious to the sentient) or some visceral dislike of Peterson and of the work of Jung and statistical analysis which informs his work. Peterson also seems to be a fanboy of Adler and Rogers (I'm a fangirl but lick no footwear).

More good news!; Even if Trumpi is impeached, Mike Pence will almost certainly be worse. I've read even Trumpi himself thinks Pence is a nut and all around 5-alarm fruitcake. He was by all accounts the 4th or 5th choice of Trumpi and he took it because he would have lost re-election as Governor of Indiana in a landslide (and that itself pretty much tells you all you need to know). We can't lose.

Re: Hedges. There will be no revolution, not now, not ever (duh). Americans elect then re-elect the most greedy, stupid, selfish empty suits (ray-gun, Clinton, 'W', Trumpi) because this is what they want. If they didn't want it, they would have elected someone else. Presidents that talk to Americans like adults and speak of choices and tradeoffs and real Christian morality (e.g. Carter) do not get re-elected and, in fact, get mocked by our culture. Trumpi is America, and America is Trumpi. If you can't come to grips with this basic reality, then move.

I don't know if you've commented on him before, but I was wondering what your thoughts are on the British thinker John Gray? I've read almost all of his books, and I have to say that I'm personally rather impressed by him. Out of his published works, my two favorites are probably "Straw Dogs" and "False Dawn" (I just finished with the latter, which is quite excellent, and I would definitely put it on the WAFER "Must Read List.") At any rate, I don't know if you've had any interaction with Gray, but it would be interesting to hear his take on something like your "Why America Failed" trilogy. If he hasn't already read it, I'm sure it would appeal to him. If nothing else, I think it would make a great radio interview if anyone could ever get the two of you on the phone at the same time!

While I don't find Jordan Peterson offensive, I've listened to several hours of his talks, and I simply don't find any of it very subtle or interesting. For someone who is just taking their first baby steps into the world of Big Ideas or the Great Books, etc., Peterson might have some value. If he gets young people excited about reading Nietzsche or Dostoyevsky, who am I to object? But it becomes downright silly when his excitable fans claim that he is the greatest thinker of the modern era. In reality, compared to someone like John Gray (or to your own work, Dr. B.), he is totally out of his depth.

In response to Waldo... I am confused abt the position "there is nothing to be done". May be in the context of decline of the imperium, there is really nothing to be done. In fact, for a vast majority of the human population outside the US, it is not a bad thing at all. But in terms of destruction of the environment, or shrinkage of the democratic space and the civil soc, something definitely needs to be done. Without the ideal of democracy and freedom, a large majority of ppl on this planet will not have the theoretical justification to fight age-old oppression (in the name of race or caste, for example).

Last night I attended a forum in which local Democratic candidates for Congress were hustling their credentials. A woman in the audience asked about how the candidates would support women's issues. One candidate, a woman, waxed long about her enduring support of women's issues. Big deal, I thought: the whole goddamn racket is about to implode, but you're all about identity politics. So I decided to go a little Waferish on the candidates and asked what they plan to do about the withering laboring classes and the increase in homelessness that has resulted. Also, how would they stop the flow of money upwards to an ever more concentrated ruling class? Well, the rest of the evening, all we heard about was how much hope and how much optimism each of the candidates has for the future. I just thought to myself: you sons of bitches will never learn, will you, until of course you yourself are living in a tent under a highway overpass. Someday, maybe they'll think back to that night in 2018 when that crazy old man asked about the future of America, and they spewed the usual BS when they could have told the truth. Sons of bitches all.

John Gray is a fascinating writer who in my opinion is very similar to Morris Berman.

The only thing I don't like about Gray is that he has a tendency to fall into antinomianism and encourage evil.

He has a chapter in Straw Dogs seeing thru morality as an illusion, but then describe evil as necessary to things we value - greed necessary for wealth, machiavellianism needed for power, etc.

It does not occur to him to that wealth and power are no less illusionary than morality, and if we abandon morality as an illusion how much more so evil! (that's actually the position of some Buddhist schools).

Gray also celebrates the Ripley novels - portraits of psycopathy.

Antinomianism has always been a temptation of people who reject this world, and tantric Buddhism is an example as well as Gnosticism - the problem is it is another extreme that is as much of an illusion as that which it rejects.

If you see the illusions of this world, then all motivation for evil - desire for wealth, domination, etc - fall away as just another illusion.

Gray sees through so many illusions, but his rejection of the world has led him to succumb to Antinomianism.

I think it's time to retire this discussion. Yr reply wd only escalate things, not cool them off, and I don't feel comfortable with Wafers insulting Wafers. An apology wd have been much better than doubling down. (Take a breath, por favor.) However, we can certainly continue to discuss Peterson pro and con, but without the ad hominem attacks (see Elaine's post above, e.g.).

Megan-

I've read a lot of Gray myself, and think highly of him. I seem to recall a rebuttal of Steven Pinker that I thought was very gd. I doubt, however, that he is aware of my work, as I'm not really on the radar screen.

pole-

Wow! No kidding. What's yr friend's name? I deal with Mertonesque themes in the 3rd story of "Destiny."

Kanye-

Jensen is probably rt, and probably u.r. as well. But your own comments as well as the Hedges-Moyers interview got me to thinking abt larger issues, so let me run on a bit.

The environmental pitch he made to Moyers didn't ring true; at least, not to me. The guy looks very sad, which is probably the product of not walking yr talk. In fact, he writes abt the env. only occasionally; almost all of his energy is devoted to American socioeconomic and political oppression. In other words, his pitch to Moyers was abt saving the env., but he is not an env. activist any more than I am, and he writes on the subject maybe 5% of the time. So what are we talking abt? If he had the courage, as far as the US goes, to say "It's over" and stick to it, then all of his essays on how things "have to change," which he continues to grind out, wd be meaningless. At that pt, the realistic, and courageous, thing wd be to leave the country, family included--maybe to Bora Bora or some place where his kids cd actually *see* these wonderful species he talks abt, not just in a bk. But to write the rare declinist essay, and then hide yr own conclusion from yrself and continue writing as tho America can be saved (i.e., as tho you were kidding abt decline), is to be living in denial. It seems to me to be a cowardly position, and his reference to the env. came off to me like a red herring, in this context.

But there is a larger issue here, regarding the env., that I feel I shd address. Hedges did say something impt regarding it when Moyers asked him abt a quote from his work in which he predicted a very bleak future for the planet. To wit, that there had to be a major shift in the way we (not just Americans, I presume) think abt our relationship to the earth. This was, in fact, the whole pt of my Reenchantment bk, and probably a major reason why it remains my one and only best-seller: a lot of folks out there agree with that assessment. But probably not enuf; and the major flaw of that bk (I now believe, looking back to 1981) is that it never dealt with the issue of power. A mental "paradigm shift" is not enuf; and while env. activism is impt, I'm skeptical as to whether it can defeat corporations (both domestic and international) that treat the planet as so much inanimate resources to be mined. What then is left? For now, my concept of Dual Process, which can include both paradigm shift and env. activism as the world capitalist system collapses, is the best thing we have (imho); but it still is not enuf. If we are going to generate an alternative narrative and an alternative action plan, we need to flesh it out much more--come up with a more detailed roadmap, so to speak. This is still lacking, as far as I can see, and I personally don't have any bright ideas at ths pt.

There have been tons of writing on planetary paradigm shift since 1981; literarily speaking, it now constitutes an entire genre. There has also been a lot of env. activism, but it is disconnected and decentralized, aside from Green party politics; which are more or less feeble. Ed Abbey's notion of 'ecotage', which can also be seen in the very impt film "The East," remains fragmentary--hit-and-run, not very widespread. How the vision of the Reenchantment bk can be realized--made real--still eludes us.

Meanwhile, even if we did have a detailed roadmap, there is the problem that Dual Process moves slowly, and that by the time alternative structures are in place--i.e., as far as env. issues are concerned--there might not be an env. left to structure. This wd be hell: a truly bleak vision, a la Woody Allen's "Sleeper," in which the landscape looks like the lunar surface, and where all that is left are McDonald's restaurants and computer terminals. Cd happen, let's not kid ourselves.

Historically speaking, the 'vector', the "arrow of time," has, since the Scientific Revolution, moved in the direction of increasing abstraction. (It's already present in Galileo.) We have lost our sensual lives (see CTOS), and the psychological cost of that has been catastrophic. We now live in a world in which young children know abt butterflies via screens and fones, not by standing in a field and watching a glorious monarch settle on a flower. How to reverse all this, beyond the formation of alternative communities of NMI's--well, yr guess is as gd as mine.

“A Princeton University professor has cancelled a course he teaches on cultural freedoms and hate speech after his use of a racial slur during a class discussion led some students to walk out. Colleagues say Professor Emeritus Lawrence Rosen has often used the slur during lectures on free speech. They say this is the first time he has received such a negative response from students.”https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/feb/14/princeton-university-professor-cancels-hate-speech-course-racial-slur

Recommended for WAFer consideration: Waltzing at the Doomsday Ball. A collection of essays by Joe Bageant. This one, “The Audacity of Depression” (April 4, 2008) says things are going very wrong, and “on an incomprehensible you massive and complex scale”:

“We now live as the technoculture’s subjects, not its masters, and will do so from here on out as viral technology mediates, homogenizes, and monetizes human experience worldwide...”. Citing American philosopher John Zerzan, Bageant summarizes Zerzan’s “simple thesis”: ‘’civilization is pathological, and needs to be dismantled.”

Bageant died in March 2011. HIs essays are available on line at joebageant.org.

MB said "How to reverse all this, beyond the formation of alternative communities of NMI's--well, yr guess is as gd as mine."

In reference this (and to your whole post) part of the denial you see in "environmentalists" is that deep down they know that all the systems are connected, environment is directly related to capitalism which is directly related to most people's current living standards. There's no way to "fix" one without fixing the others. This is also why people like Kingsnorth, Guy McPherson, and to be frank Me, have pretty much given up on any meaningful nationwide/worldwide change happening except via catastrophe.

This is also why we continuously see the technobuffoons clinging to the "next big thing" in fixing the environment via tech. "We can fix the world if only we had the right battery or wind turbine" with little to no thought on where are you going to get all those heavy metals needed for your precious electric car, or what have you.

JP’s religious stuff I don’t bother with so I won’t vouch for that, but I appreciate his take on the gender pronoun issue, which is creeping amoeba-like all over my little world. Signing up my 6 yo for summer camps, there are personal pronoun selections on the registration form, and camp counselors at some of them have their pronouns written out underneath their names on their nametags. And at our babysitting co-op meetings, parents are now introducing themselves by specifying their pronouns. I don’t call attention to it because I don’t want to explain it to my daughter yet, she’s only 6! I wonder how rare WAFer parents are, I certainly don’t know any, but it’s a hard issue to bring up. Most I know blame Trump and social injustice but won’t go any deeper. I had my kids well after knowing there was no rosy future, because to me it's about enjoying life now. What else is there? Sharon Astyk used to write wonderful essays about raising children in a low waste, low energy way.Thanks GSWH and GBOE. You rock.

What tremendous sickness. This is surely a serious aspect of our decline.

Jas-

I did an obit of Joe shortly after he died; I think it's in AWTY.

The following is from a speech of Woodrow Wilson, 1915. Whether he actually walked his talk is a different story (he may have been an early version of Obama).

"If I am strong, I am ashamed to bully the weak...The time has come to call a halt to 'dollar diplomacy'." {Regarding Mexico and other countries:} "It is their emancipation they are seeking...they are entitled to attempt their liberty...Every people has a right to choose its own forms of government, not once, but as often as it pleases...It is none of my business, and it is none of your business how long they take in determining it. It is none of my business and it is none of yours how they go about the business. The country is theirs. The Government is theirs. The liberty, if they can get it...is theirs. And so far as my influence goes while I am President nobody shall interfere with them."

I think it's impossible to have a clear-cut NMI or Dual Process. From an activist standpoint, there's just as much worth simply pointing the douchebaggery out like we do on this blog, as planting trees or fighting against the construction of another Burger King in your neighbourhood. Having some kind of "roadmap" runs the risk of turning NMI into an ideology, which would defeat its whole purpose.

I think we both are on the same page about Hedges. To use your analysis in CTOS, let's just say Hedges' insistence on America's Political and Economic Oppression is his Transitional Object in dealing with the Nemo in his life ;-)

When the Columbine High School massacre happened in 1999 it was so unusual that it received a huge amount of coverage. Now these shootings are so common that they seem like a regular part of the news cycle that eventually gets forgotten after a month or so. That just shows you how bad things have gotten in the United States.

You ask, I wonder how rare WAFer parents are? Your question made me remember an article you might be interested in: Thompson Elizabeth and Marianne, Erakko Taylor Barbara"Raising Children to be Real in an Unreal World."

Elizabeth, my daughter is a WAFer parent with 2 small children. You can get a glimpse of where she came from in this article. Their home is tech free with no TV. The natural world is their 'playground' with trips to local parks and lakes and streams. The kids use their imaginations while they play with rocks, grass, acorns, etc always building imaginary bridges, roads, forests, etc over and over again without getting bored. Preschool is not on the agenda as socializing kids and developing fine motor co-ordination comes naturally from a developing child.

Derrick Jensen was a great, genuinely radical figure at one point a decade or so ago, but he's lost a couple of steps. At this point, he's basically in the same camp as Hedges; a liberal hung up on issues like prostitution while the world burns.

Why can't a couple of intellectuals figure out that capitalism makes whores of us all? Some less literally than others, to be sure, but I've never felt any less than a complete whore whenever forced to sell my time to a corporation in order to survive. Whoredom follows money like the night the day. Ask yourself then what a radical response to prostitution should look like. No, it's not a new law.

Environmentalism is a subject that is not really in the mb wheelhouse. Not that he doesn't get it, but it's seemingly a subject he never really got around to focusing on. For a quality despairing take on environmental activism, best to look to the someone like Paul Kingsnorth:

This is the End of the Road, the project that started in 1492 if not earlier. This is exactly how our forefathers cheated the indigenous folks off their lands, life n liberty all over the planet. It is not a stretch of imagination nowadays that every institution n trends of ours, from education to medicine, from justice to empathy, from religion to politics, every single one of them is some sort of sugar-coated scam. The joke is finally us. Many environmental organizations and most NGOs are just green-scammers. Albeit, I love the on-your-face boorish scam of Trump than the I-feel-your-pain scam of priests like Obama who takes the altar boy to the basement to tell him that he's the savior instead.

Pastrami - I had a conversation with a relative once where I was trying to make the case that America had made itself too dependent on cars, and had thrown away opportunities to build cities around walk-ability and public transit. I said this would not only have been a lot better for the environment, it would have been better for our cities, and its citizens too (The end of never-ending car maintenance, stuff like that), we wouldn't be dependent on foreign oil, etc. He kept saying "But what about the jobs? Lots of people sell cars, work on cars, blah blah". This was the only way he could think about it, he had no other response. Americans, with a few exceptions, do not know how to think about these types of things holistically, everything gets reduced down to a basic framing device, like "jobs".

On Peterson - Hes got some interesting things to say, especially about all this pronoun / gender identity nonsense. Tho the group that has sprung up around him does seem a bit...cultish. I've enjoyed watching some of his lectures on youtube but he seems to view all the evil in the world as the result of an incoherent mish-mash of marxism and postmodernism. Dunno, I cant figure out what he is exactly, hes not a total charlatan, but I'm not sure hes some angelic political thinker either.

Ho-hum, another day, another mass school shooting. Here's a little fun a Wafer could have with any prog who is confident that defeating Trump and having the Dums reclaim CONgress would "fix" the country: ask them flat out to name one single politician of national stature who stands firmly for gun control and has consistently stood up to the NRA. Even lefty heroes such as Bernie and Lizzy haven't done that. They'll probably come back with some nonsense about how Obama WANTED to do something but his hands were tied--as if the man who for 8 years had the power to drone-assassinate anyone on earth without repercussion was completely helpless as kids are regularly gunned down in their classrooms, and other mass shootings just keep getting worse.

The fact that we stand by and do nothing is all you really need to know as far as being a barometer of just how sick our society is. Michael Moore, back in the days before Trump derangement drove him off the deep end, was just starting to identify the incubator of this sickness (the nature of American society itself) in his movie Bowling for Columbine, but has since dropped pursuing the issue further as far as I'm aware, even though the problem has become exponentially worse since the Columbine shooting nearly 20 years ago. Too much real truth even for him, I guess.

In the first 45d of 2018, the us empire has had 18 school shootings. Very exciting and this "greatness" was overwhelming.

Please be on the look out for more: bottom lip biting MSM pictorials, thoughts and prayers by the political frivolous, melancholy music, calls for this, that, and the other, replays of children running, pseudo-forensic analyses of the shooter, many thanks for the first responders/hero talk/great work, lit candles, blue ribbon task force to document how could this happen..., and hugging. More of nothing.

Mass shooting tracker shows mass shootings happen nearly every other day in the US:

http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting

My conjecture is that people see from the authorities and those that run this country, that violence is the way to solve your problems. US promotes revenge and punishment as its ethos, not only in it's international relations (Syria, Iraq, Afhganistan, drone strikes and so on...) but also as a cultural value. If you are disrespected, then you are supposed to enact 10 times the punishment on any perceived offender(s).

I would suggest the Dukkha Deli, because Wafers know that all is suffering. Also, a while back I noticed a new Indian restaurant non-ironically called Samsara, which made me giggle uncontrollably.

WWF update: Look at these Frenchies fighting over Nutella like a bunch of Americans on Black Friday. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/26/ce-nest-pas-normal-french-shoppers-bra-over-discounted-nutella

Good points. But in fairness, I think it's a bit of a misrepresentation to say that Gray "encourages evil". It's true that he doesn't believe in objective morality, but that's only because he doesn't have faith in any transcendent reality (i.e., God) which could provide us with a framework of absolute values. Also, he is a strong determinist who believes that freedom of choice is an illusion. And in the absence of freedom, morality can have no meaningful basis. That said, arguing that morality has no ultimate foundation, is not the same thing as advocating immoral behavior, or saying that we should all just behave like reprobates and sociopaths. Nietzsche has often been taxed with the same kind of thing, but I think that too is a mischaracterization of his position.

Dr. Berman,

Yes, I was going to post the link to the Gray-Pinker exchange but I forgot. For what it's worth, I find Pinker terribly smug and abrasive, and I think Gray clearly has the right of it in this debate. Chomsky had a point when he dismissed Pinker and Sam Harris as "religious fanatics" who have merely replaced God with the Neoliberal State (Gray would say, with "Progress") At any rate, it is worth reading and thinking about both sides. The first link is Gray's critique of Pinker and the second link is Pinker's response:

On climate warming - the basic facts about the scientific process of warming and what warming will do to the world have been with us for at least 3 decades. The atmosphere is now over 400 parts per million carbon dioxide, a level not reached in millions of years. At this point, no one can plead ignorance. Climatic catastrophe is as certain now as the decline of the American Empire. Nevertheless, nothing really changes, in terms of govt action. So I wonder if there is a point at which cultures facing imminent death begin, unconsciously, to wish for it as a suicidal way of eliminating the anxiety of death. If this is true for individuals faced with more anxiety than they can handle, then it may also be true for whole societies. So that what we are witnessing politically and environmentally is surrender to thanatos - the serenity of death being more acceptable than the anxiety of life.

On the most recent school shooting - I've watched a couple of TV "news" programs this morning, all making the same old tired arguments and suggestions. What no one dare ask is what these shootings say about the American people - about who we really are, what we really value, and who we elect to high office. More later.

Here's something not about latest the mass shooting - A big blowback here in New Orleans this January as police raids on eight strip clubs resulted in a huge, internationally-reported protest by the city's stripper population, their relatives and friends. These clubs were stripped of their liquor licenses (a few closed) over reported lewd acts and solicitation, causing many of the clubs' workers to fear for their future: Stripped of Work (protest sign: New Orleans needs $tripper$). The raids were conducted to find evidence of human trafficking for immoral purposes but instead has resulted in a new dimension in identity politics!

Bill,

On the VP and the openly gay skier, a slight chance Pence might change his mind was lost. On the other hand, the Veep himself probably would have remained one of his own brand of virtue-signalling douchebags, a typical Christian conservative. I know this type: they listen, and then spout bible and verse or some other rationalisation why your own reality just ain't so. And even if they don't say anything except acknowledge your complaint, it's still in one ear and out the other.

Derrick Jensen has valid old arguments such as if we don't treat the animals and nature with respect how can we respect each other etc. As a victim of abuse he reminds me of gay men I've talked with about geo-politics or environmental issues, somehow the conversation usually ends up about gay rights and abuse. Anyway, I'm with G. Carlin and MB - the problems are so overwhelming - seemingly impossible to escape.

Sorry, cdn't post it. We have a half-page-max rule on this blog. Pls compress and re-send, thank you.

Megan-

Pinker is a turkey. He also fancies himself a follower of Chomsky, at least linguistically (wh/I think is true; we've discussed this here b4). My own feeling is that he needs to be beaten w/in an inch of his life and then thrown on a dungheap, but I can't afford to fly to Boston rt now (I also misplaced my tire iron). He's one of the greatest horses' asses this country has produced.

Waferette-

We welcome all Wafer Women on this blog. But pls observe max-one-post-every-24hrs rule, thank you.

TZD-

Honestly, I think everyone shd just shoot everyone. In a few days, the problem of America wd be solved.

Mike R.-

Well obviously he was a demented loner, this has nothing to do with the American Way of Life (altho it's become a national pattern), blah blah. I mean, who cd be angry, living in such a wonderful, life-affirming country?

Bill-

Like Chomsky, Hedges, Trumpi, Botox Face, and 325 million other Americans, Moore thinks we can make America great again. Brain damage spreads like a virus, I guess.

WuDu-

On car culture, check out DAA ch. 7. On Peterson: maybe he and his followers need some WaferTherapy (trademark sign here). 1st principle of WaferTherapy: Try not to go overboard, fer chrissakes.

Waldo-

Pls don't talk abt me in the 3rd person; it's rude. I'm rt here, after all. As far as my supposedly ignoring env. issues: you might wanna check out the Reenchantment bk. I was one of the 1st to say that once you start treating matter as dead (mechanical philosophy of the Scientific Revolution), it's no-holds-barred in terms of exploiting the earth. "Gaia" shows up at the end of CTOS as well.

Realist-

I'm guessing not.

Tom-

I doubt that as much as 1% of the population cd say who Stephen Paddock is, for example, or Dylann Roof. On the other hand, 99% have seen pics of Kim's buttocks, and most of those probably had a very positive reaction.

Kanye-

But it may be worth the risk.

Nesim-

Half-page max, sorry.

Mike Kelly-

They may not be sons of bitches. They may just be American turkeys (sorry to be redundant), clueless morons. Thought expt: you have a very sharp axe and cleave the skull of everyone in that room. You discover that their crania contain no gray matter--only pieces of old dog excrement. Is yr reaction one of surprise, or Duh! If Americans cd help themselves, i.e. not be douche bags, this wd be a very different country. The 1st step, however, is the hardest: imagine each of those folks going home, looking in the mirror, and crying out, "My god! I'm a douche bag!" And then calling up a neighbor and saying to them: "Edna! I just realized that I'm a douche bag!" Not enuf to prevent our collapse, of course, but it might slow it down a tad.

Quick story: I took my father out to see an NHL game the other night. During the TV time-outs there were people with t-shirt-guns launching free t-shirts out into the crowd and my father said to me "Boar's Head, this is just like in Gladiator when they tossed loaves of breads to the people in the coliseum." I chuckled and told the old man that he has no idea how right he is.

On Wafer Parents: My wife and I are expecting so I'll be sure to let you know if I am fortunate enough to encounter any Wafers or fellow travelers out there on the local playgrounds.

Dr. B: I just got done reading QOV and was absolutely blown away by your analysis of the myths and bullshit that drive the average American's religious zeal about all things American. It had never occurred to me that being an American Turkey is a civil religion in this country and that daring to criticize America is considered pure blasphemy.

This whole time I kept wondering why folks would turn beat red and start screaming at me every time we got on the subject of politics or history...

Here's an interesting NYT op-ed:https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/10/opinion/sunday/living-abroad-taught-me-to-love-america.htmlI really don't know what to say. Truly a bizarre article. This woman moved back to the USA from France (!) and admits in the comments sections that she has no health insurance and that one of her brothers died from lack of preventative health care. To her, something like: the USA is a 'pure' meritocracy while in France only the super smart can go to elite universities. I do not understand.

R:; polecat - what does a society do facing imminent death? Fetishize life for one. Hence the 'pro-life' moment in this country is really solely against abortion for poor minority women (the rich will just fly to France) and against assisted suicide for the terminally ill and in pain. Socio-politially the 'pro-life' moment is also: pro-military, against pre-natal spot-natal healthcare (or any form of universal healthcare really), pro-death penalty, pro-gun, and anti-environment. They also like to kill abortions doctors to prove their 'pro-life' bona fides. Only in America among western countries would such sick, sick demented people become powerful political movement.

Congratulations. In TMWQ, Paola is pregnant with the 1st Authentic baby. You may be the 1st Wafer parents on the blog, I dunno. As for Americans, I think there's enuf evidence to conclude they are mentally ill. This is not a metaphor. I'm talking abt certifiably nuts.

But here's the real question that's troubling me: Whatever happened to Sarah Palin and Ging Newtrich? Those two have been rather silent as of late. I miss them.

WAFER Brother Maynard--that article was typical american drivel written. The author is a well known propagandist writing empty caloric rhetoric for the 98.7% of americans who are dead from the neck up and wanna hear american rah rah.

Dr. Berman has stated many times the work of Robert Bellah; the love of america was a civil religion. Does NOT matter what religion you are or where you 'reside' politically--left, right, center-does not mean squat. The common thread is the lust for america. When one is empty ontologically and intellectually, no narrative, then one needs to fill that emptiness with something--and that something was "american" "values"--hustling, huckstering, and war mongering.

If you sharply criticize the empire, be prepared for a vitriolic rage--akin to telling an alcoholic to put down that drink.

Never argue with an Evangelical, no matter what you say they always got the Trump card : God wrote this book, he's beyond Newton and Einstein and the speed of light, etc, vomitace. That's why they call 'em the dark ages.

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About Me

Morris Berman is well known as an innovative cultural historian and social critic. He has taught at a number of universities in Europe and North America, and has held visiting endowed chairs at Incarnate Word College (San Antonio), the University of New Mexico, and Weber State University. During 1982-88 he was the Lansdowne Professor in the History of Science at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. Berman won the Governor’s Writers Award for Washington State in 1990, the Rollo May Center Grant for Humanistic Studies in 1992, and the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity (from the Media Ecology Association) in 2013. He is the author of a trilogy on the evolution of human consciousness–-The Reenchantment of the World (1981), Coming to Our Senses (1989), and Wandering God: A Study in Nomadic Spirituality (2000)–and in 2000 his Twilight of American Culture was named a “Notable Book” by the New York Times Book Review. Dr. Berman relocated to Mexico in 2006, and during 2008-9 was a Visiting Professor at the Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico City.